Big Easy event draws 35 evacuees

Rebecca Townsend | 04/23/06

How to help
Kathryn Oberg, a disaster relief coordinator for the Mid-Missouri Office of Lutheran Family and Children's Services, says Katrina evacuees in the area still need access to job opportunities and transportation. If you can help, call her at 815-9955.

During Mardis Gras this year, New Orleans native and Columbia resident Judy Schermer began thinking about how homesick the people who relocated to Columbia after Hurricane Katrina must be.

Her mother had moved here after Katrina and "I really felt the need to connect with other people (from New Orleans)," Schermer said. "(New Orleans) is a big town, but it's a small town. You just feel like everyone's family."

Schermer still had the disaster relief contacts she had used to help her mother during the transition, so she called them.

"I wouldn't be as effective at fundraising, but I know how to throw a party," she said.

One of those contacts, Kathryn Oberg, a disaster relief coordinator for the Mid-Missouri Office of Lutheran Family and Children's Services, agreed to send out a mailing to evacuees still living in the area.

The "celebration of New Orleans" attracted a group of 35 evacuees and 35 volunteers to the American Legion Hall on Friday night.

Roderick Pomfrey, 28, of East New Orleans, brought his laptop. On his desktop, images of Hurricanes Dennis, Rita, Emily and Wilma, floating across the Gulf Coast, were dwarfed by the image of Katrina.

He scrolled through pictures of his devastated home and city, narrating "there's the water line, there's the mold line, this room had mold on the ceiling."

Fellow evacuee Jan Connor-Washington said, "I've got the exact same pictures."

Pomfrey and his girlfriend, Doretha Mealancon, 23, of Marrero, La., describe themselves as the last graduates of the College of Science of New Orleans' Southern University, having received their degrees last May.

In considering his impressions of Columbia, Pomfrey, who is a doctoral student of chemistry at MU, said the Columbia police should be commended because they have not pulled him over, even though he drives an "old bucket" around town. At home he would have been stopped "80 times," he said.

Mealancon is studying nursing at Columbia College.

Pomfrey likens himself to "a battery away from its charger."

"It was a blessing to get out, but every New Orleanian knows there's no place like home and you got to go back to New Orleans," he said. "Maybe one motivates the other."

In terms of the future, he said he has business in Columbia for now but plans to return to New Orleans.

"I'm trying to rebuild by remote control," he said. "I'm strategically placing my assets in the area, so when the time comes I can milk my cows."

Connor-Washingon left New Orleans with nine members of her family, after weathering the storm in Birmingham, Ala., they came to Columbia where they all stayed in her son Regan LeCesne's two-bedroom apartment.

The family has since relocated to a condominium, where they will stay until contractors can repair Connor-Washington's home, which was flooded with a foot of water.

Her mother's house is beyond repair, but her family's roots in the neighborhood are deep.

Their street, George "Nick" Connor Drive, is named after her father, who co-founded neighboring St. Augustine High School and worked as a teacher there from 1957 to 1994. Her mother, Marjorie, wants to return.

Connor-Washington, who had worked as a nurse for more than 25 years, has been focusing on making jewelry since relocating to Columbia.

Schermer's sense that the evacuees could use fellowship was well-founded. Many of those attending her party said they had seen maybe one other person they had known from home around Columbia, but none have had any meaningful contact with others displaced by the floods.

"I have to call all the way to New Orleans when I need to talk," said Gary Smith.

Smith's wife, Bessie, had taken a job in Columbia before the disaster, but Smith had returned to New Orleans to help his Alzheimer's-sticken mother.

He left the city before the flooding but was stuck "for a day and a night" on the highway to Houston.

Smith, who had worked in the banquet departments of New Orleans' higher-end hotels like Hyatt and Westin, has had trouble finding similar work.

"People are still struggling to find jobs that provide a living wage, enough money to support them and their family," Oberg said, explaining in New Orleans, hotel work would pay $11 an hour, whereas here it might pay $6 or $7.

Smith is stuck with no work, but his son has "done very well since he's been here," said Bessie, noting he has gotten a job washing dishes at Bandana's BBQ and will enter Hickman High School next fall.

Exacerbating Smith's worries, the health of his mother has declined since her arrival in Columbia, a burden he and Schermer have in common and were able to discuss.

Schermer's mother's condition kept her from the party. "I wish my mom could have been here tonight," Schermer said. "She would have enjoyed it."

A local reverend advised Smith to visit a psychiatrist to discuss his stress, but Smith said the doctor said the same thing the lawyers told him: "I don't know what to tell you."

"All I need is for someone to come and save me from the bills and mortgages," Smith said. "I worked so hard to keep the property together and it got destroyed and with parents that are hard to deal with - I don't care to go back, really." "Maybe Oprah can help," he said with a slight smile.

Columbia's Disaster Recovery Center initially helped about 500 evacuees secure their basic needs after Katrina. Oberg was hired in November to provide long-term service for the 50 to 60 families still in the area. She estimated about 200 individuals displaced by Katrina are living in Columbia and 42 kids are in school.

"We've been telling everybody when we realized New Orleans was not going to be the place it was, we said the rest of the country is gonna get some good food and good music," Pomfrey said. "Now we can't keep it to ourselves."

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